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User blog:TheRadBoy/I saw a decapitated head (and other Poland stories...)
I've been back from Poland for two days now. So here's a blog post detailing my many adventures (minus the first few days, which were already covered in my previous blog post). On Monday, July 10th, I met up with Rafal. Yes, THE Rafal from xat. As you may or may not know, I went to school with him in the 5th and 6th grade. We went to Frasses, a local restaurant and caught up on life and ish. On Wednesday, July 12th, I traveled with Rafal to Krakow. This is a thing we do every summer. Usually, our friend Ania (a distant cousin of mine, a neighbor of my grandma's, who also went to the 5th and 6th grade with us, and is currently Rafal's girlfriend) comes with us. But she couldn't make it, so we went alone. We debated which train to take a couple days earlier. Rafal wanted the 6:30 one, I was adamant that the 7:45 one makes more sense. The train ride is 1 hour and 15 minutes, so we'd be there just in time for the opening of the largest mall in Krakow, the Galeria Krakowska, at 9:00. Rafal caved in. We were maybe 3 minutes into our journey when the train came to a sudden halt on the Debica bridge. After a couple minutes, rumors started spreading that the train hit somebody. Rafal and I opened the door, and like a lot of other passengers (we Polacks are morbidly curious), looked outside to see what all the fuss was about. In the distance, we could see what might have been a dead body and some police officers standing by it. Rumors spread that the guy was decapitated. Rafal and I decided to travel to the back of the train (the breaking distance was long enough so that, even though we obviously hit the guy from the front, by the time the long train could come to a full stop, the body was several meters away from us) to see the body. Oh, how morbidly curious we were. It was kinda cramped, because several of our morbidly curious fellow Polacks were looking at it. We found out that the train can't move until the district attorney arrived. Fun fact; he's actually a friend of my dad's. And knowing him, he was still asleep that early in the morning. Some fancy-dressed business woman left the train, she looked angery and she was yelling into her phone. I guess she didn't want to be late for some meeting. Two teenage girls, and some middle-aged men stepped outside to get a closer look at the body. But the police made them get back inside. Rafal and I couldn't see the body very well through the dirty window. But after over an hour, we saw them clearing it up. The officer picked up the decapitated head and blood was gushing out. We were disgusted. After that, we went back to our seats. We enjoyed Krakow when we finally arrived at 11:00, did our traditional visits to fine eateries such as KFC and Costa Coffee. Also our traditional cruise on the Vistula River. Later on, we found out that the guy who died committed suicide, so it wasn't an accident. He was actually a friend of Rafal's older sister. Small world. On Thursday, July 13th, I saw my cousin. He also lives in Chicago, and he came with his parents to Poland the day before. They weren't supposed to come this year, but my cousin's grandpa (from the other side of the family, so not my grandpa) had a stroke in the spring and they had to help his grandma take care of him. On Saturday, July 15th, we visited my great-grandmother (who turns 95 in October) and her family in the deep countryside. On Sunday, July 16th, we went to our cabin in the hills with my cousin. Played hide-and-seek, even though he's 12, my sister's 13, and I was almost 16 at that point. We'll never grow up. :P On Wednesday, July 19th, I turned 16! Yay me! Had a family party (ugh), but it wasn't too bad. Cake was good. On Sunday, July 23rd, we went to our cabin once again. This time we had even more family over. My grandma's brother and some of his kids and grand-kids. My dad's cousin, Marta, is from Warsaw and she's apparently rich as hell. Her husband is one of the creators of The Witcher, that famous Polish video game. She's like in her 50s but she just got back from a visit to Peru with a group of 20-year-olds. Apparently, they had no clue she was twice as old as they were. The wonders of money and plastic surgery, man. My sister and cousin and I decided to take a little hike. We went to catch frogs in the nearby creek. Then we took a forest trail back to the cabin. But since we were last there years ago, the trail was basically gone. Too many trees and bushes in the way. So we had to crawl our way up this hill. It was tough, we had fire-ant hills to avoid. But we made it out, checked ourselves for ticks, and seemed fine. On Tuesday, July 25th, my cousin flew back home. That same day, we visited another one of my great-grandmothers, who is 96. Technically, she's not related to us. She's my grandpa's stepmom. But we treat her like family. They have a huge dog with blue eyes. I love him. On Saturday, July 29th, I took a hike with my grandfather. There's a nature preserve near where he lives. As we entered the forest, it was absolutely beautiful. The ground was thick and dense with blueberry bushes, ferns, and moss. The trees were old oaks and tall pines. There was a sign saying we might encounter razorbacks, deers, and elk. But all we saw were lizards, which is nothing special, since those things run rampant in Poland. Like, seriously, one day I counted 20 in my grandparents' yard. But we heard hawks, which I guess is something. We almost got lost, but it was a fun, 3-hour hike. On Tuesday, August 1st, I took a road trip with my other grandpa. We traveled through the hills to the village of Stepina to visit one of Hitler's bunkers. Unfortunately, it was closed due to some kind of emergency. Said they would be open online, smh. But we still got to see it from the outside, and it was cool. On our way back, we stopped in Wielopole Skrzynskie at the museum of Tadeusz Kantor. He was a famous Polish theater director and actor. He was also a distant relative of mine. I usually hate museums, but it was actually interesting there. On Wednesday, August 2nd, we had the hottest day of a really hot week. It was like 95 degrees. We went to the water park in Debica. On Sunday, August 6th, we went to our cabin for the last time. But it was sorta boring without our cousin. On Monday, August 7th, I hung out with Rafal and Ania for the last time. We were supposed to go to Krakow again the week before, but on account of the heat wave we decided to stay home. On Tuesday, August 8th, I said my final goodbyes to Poland. Walked the grandparents' dog, Ares, for the last time. Unfortunately the dumbass ran away (which he frequently does, he's basically a wild animal. We don't keep him chained, or on a leash when we go on walks. He's free as hell) so we couldn't say a true goodbye to him. Oh, well. On Wednesday, August 9th, at 1:00 in the morning, we had to wake up for our flight. At 2:00, we hit the road. Our grandpa drove us off to Krakow. By the time we were almost there (so around 3:00), we saw the highway was blocked. The police were pointing a sign to take the exit, cause the road was closed. So my grandpa started driving onto the exit, when suddenly, he saw that the sign said "Exit to Chyzne and Zakopane". He was like "Oh, what am I doing, we're not going there, we're going to Krakow" and drove back onto the road that was closed. My sister and mom and I were in disbelief. Good God, grandpa's getting old and senile. After ten seconds of having our jaws-dropped at his dumbassery (old people, smh), we explained to him that, even though we weren't going to Chyzne or Zakopane, we were supposed to take that exit as a detour since the rest of the highway was blocked. But it was too late. My grandpa suggested he'd take a U-turn back towards the exit. Even though the road was empty (since all the cars were taking that exit), we were pretty sure that was still dangerous and illegal. So we drove on in that empty road. After a few minutes, we came to a stop. There was a truck with its lights dimmed off, parked. I dunno bout them, but I was scared as hell. Trucks are scary as it is... but with their lights dimmed, at 3:00 in the morning, with a Ukrainian license plate? I was terrified there was some grand Russian mafia conspiracy going on. But, we decided to drive around the truck, and luckily, we weren't alone with a big scary Ukrainian truck. There was a long line of others trucks and cars, most of which were Polish. When we got to the front of the line, we saw a bunch of police. Looked like there had been an accident, so that's why the road was blocked. Grandpa and I got out of the car to ask the police what the hell was going on. The officer seemed a bit ticked off that we were walking on the highway, but it's not like any vehicles were moving. He told us to get our asses back in the car, and that they're almost done cleaning up. Luckily, he wasn't lying. After five minutes of waiting, the road was opened again. So we weren't late to the airport after all. At 5:00, I had my flight from Krakow to Munich. And then, at 11:00, my flight from Munich to Chicago. And now I'm back home. I start school soon, so expect a blog about that by the end of the month. Bye bye! Thanks for reading. Category:Blog posts